Lawsagna

12 Days of ...

Cookies:

"Celebrate the holidays with a different recipe every day"

http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/12_days_of_cookies

Fitness:

"Question: What Do You Get When 250 of The World's Leading Experts Decide To Work Together To Help Hundreds Of Thousands Of People From All Around The World Achieve Their Health And Fitness Goals... For FREE?"

http://www.12daysoffitness.com/

Creative thinking in conflict resolution

I like thinking frameworks.  Even though they sound restrictive, I’ve found that in fact, they often help to generate more innovative ideas than the free-form brainstorming.  In his article “The Joke Model of Creative Thinking” at Mediate.com, John Cooley shows how the structure and formulas used to create a joke can be applied in conflict resolution: 

It is the quality and the timing of the punchline that comprise the creative act and speeds the joke to a satisfying resolution. It is this same kind of punchline -- specially selected new information -- that must be injected into the mediation process at the appropriate time in order to yield highly satisfactory, optimal, or even super-optimal, solutions. A point deserving special emphasis, which may indeed serve as the punchline of this article, is as follows: It is the mental process which occurs in joke processing in a microsecond--at the time of and just before surprise--that must be replicated in the mediation setting in order to achieve super-optimum solutions; it is as if that mental process of reframing be viewed under a microscope and in slow-motion to be effectively discerned and applied.

The substantive steps of reframing in the joke process may be replicated in mediation on a gross scale and at a cosmically decelerated rate of speed. Two questions present themselves: First, what are punchlines in mediation? And second, at what stage of the mediation process should they be introduced?

You can read the article here.

Lawyer Depression

ABA Journal discusses lawyer depression in the article “Lawyer Depression Comes Out of the Closet” by Debra Cassens Weiss:

About 19 percent of lawyers experience depression at any given time, compared with 6.7 percent of the general population. About 20 percent of lawyers have drinking problems, twice the rate of the general population.

Many lawyers hide such conditions for fear of losing their practices.  The article highlights several resources that lawyers can use to address these serious issues, including the website created by attorney Dan Lukasik, which offers information and support for lawyers with depression.

Orientation Series: 21 Steps to Becoming a Better Learner

Step 17:  Becoming a reflective learner

Reflective learners are better at learning because they regularly look for opportunities to improve the learning process.  They are also likely to use their new knowledge more effectively and purposefully.  What distinguishes reflective learners?  Here are few characteristics you want to cultivate to become a reflective learner:

• Motivation.  When you are motivated, you see learning challenges as opportunities to perfect your learning skills.
• Curiosity.  Inquisitiveness drives your mind to experience, explore and ask questions.  It works up your learning appetite.
• Focus. Focus makes you persevere and stick to the subject matter until you get the results.   When you are focused, you are more discerning and selective when it comes to information, and that helps to deepen your knowledge.
• Self-awareness.  You should know what kind of learner you are and what learning strategies work best for you.   
• Confidence.   Don’t be afraid to fail.  You want to be open to new ideas and approaches even if they involve risk.  You should also welcome criticism because it helps you grow.
• Info-savviness. You need information processing and learning skills to be able to locate, evaluate, synthesize, and integrate new information. 

One step you can take right now to become a reflective learner is to create your personal learning portfolio.  A learning portfolio is a record of your personal learning experience.   Here are a few suggestion on how you may want to approach it:

1. Identify the content of your learning.  What is it that you want to know?  Look at your current projects and goals and identify a learning component in them.  For example, you want more clients.  What do you need to learn to get more clients?  Do you want to know how to market effectively on the internet?  How to network?  How to contact your strategic partners?  You get the idea.  Identifying a learning component in each task will force you to look at the efficiency of what you are already doing.  Ask yourself what you can learn to become better at this task.  Engage your curiosity.  Record your ideas in your learning portfolio. 
2. Write down the reasons why you want to learn those things.  How does your learning fit into the larger context of your personal development, career objectives, and social life?  You are more likely to focus on and achieve your goal if you have a reminder of why it is important.   
3. Determine how you are going to accomplish your learning objectives.  What experiences do you need to have?  How do you develop the skills you need?  Who can be your teacher / role model / mentor?  Use your info-savviness as you create your own learning curriculum filled with activities that can boost your professional and personal development.
4. Figure out how you can measure you progress.  How do you know that you have reached your goal?  What are your milestones?  Be confident enough to ask for feedback.  Record your successes and challenges.
5. Reflect on your learning process.  Practice self-awareness as you write down your observations of what works and what doesn’t work for you.  How could you learn more effectively?  Here are some questions you may want to ask yourself:
   - What confused you most?
   - What is the best way to resolve your confusion?
   - What key ideas and information did you learn?
   - What surprised, dismayed, delighted you most in you learning experience?
   - How does your learning relate to the larger context of your life and work goals?
   - Have you learned any practical skills, ideas, tools, techniques that you can easily apply to real-life situations?
   - Have you learned anything new about yourself, your interests, feelings, values?
   - What helped your learning?
   - What interfered with your learning?
   - What should you do more of?  What should you do less of?
   - What is one thing (skill, habit, activity) you want to focus on next?
6. Find the ways to use and apply your new knowledge and skills.  Stay confident in your abilities as you brainstorm new ways to use your knowledge.  How can you learn more by doing? 
7. Have a section where you can record random comments and observations, clip images that appeal to you, write down quotations, ask yourself questions and just let your thoughts flow onto the paper without reservations.  This will fuel your motivation.

What do you do to be a reflective learner?

Orientation Series:  21 Steps to Becoming a Better Learner:
Step 1:  Setting your learning objectives
Step 2:  Taking an inventory of your skills
Step 3:  Taking an Inventory of Your Learning Tools
Step 4:  Finding opportunities for cognitive apprenticeship
Step 5:   Determining the "IIQ" of what you read
Step 6:  Choosing helpful books for law students
Step 7:  “The Three 'P's of Performance” in Action
Step 8:  Tapping into your social networks
Step 9:  Identifying your learning barriers
Step 10:  Finding your sources of motivation
Step 11:  Managing your energy
Step 12:  Focusing on how you think
Step 13:  Mastering informal learning and professional development
Step 14:  Asking Good Questions
Step 15:  Condensing your knowledge
Step 16:  Memorizing

 

Fortune Cookie

 

How attitudes towards intelligence affect the ability to learn

How we think about our intelligence influences our success as learners.  In her article “The Secret to Raising Smart Kids” in the current issue of Scientific American Mind, Carol S. Dweck, Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor of Psychology at Stanford University and the author of “Mindset:  The New Psychology of Success,” describes two kinds of attitude towards intelligence that affect kids’ performance in school:  the “growth mind-set” and the “fixed mind-set.”  People with the “growth mind-set” believe that their intelligence can be developed through learning and hard work, while those with the “fixed mind-set” believe that their intelligence is static and cannot be improved.  A recent study has found that children with the “growth mind-set” perform better in school, show greater persistence when they face challenges, and are more enthusiastic about learning.  In contrast, kids with the “fixed mind-set” are more concerned about “looking smart” than learning, get discouraged with they encounter a problem, and avoid challenges.  These differences are also reflected in the workplace where people with the “growth mind-set” are more likely to mentor others and to welcome feedback because they see it as a tool for improvement.  Those who believe that their intelligence is fixed are likely to ignore their own shortfalls and shun criticism. 

How do you develop the “growth mind-set”?  The article suggests praising kids for their effort and hard work instead of their intelligence.  Students also benefit from learning about the brain and its ability to change and grow new connections.

Understanding your personal energy patterns

If you are like many overworked and overwhelmed people I know, you probably experience the lack of energy more often that you’d like.  I want to offer you an exercise to help you understand your energy flow better.  Here’s what you do:

1. Take a piece of paper and divide it into two columns.  In the left side column, write down ten things that drain you energy.  Think of tasks that leave you exhausted, people that seem to zap your energy, habits that add to your fatigue. 
2. Now, in the right side column, write down ten things that increase your energy.  Think about activities that energize you, people that inspire you and propel you to action, daily routines that help you maintain your health and sanity. 
3. Once you are done with your lists, draw a bucket that represents your typical 24-hour day.  Now fill your bucket with the things from your lists, estimating the percentage of the bucket those things tend to occupy.
4. Take a close look at your full bucket.  Are you happy with the distribution of energy-producing v. energy-draining activities?  If yes, congratulate yourself on the ability to balance your energy well.  If you see room for improvement, ask yourself what you would need to re-balance your bucket.